A new gear ring design - this time with 3-toothed planet gears! And a more intricate knurling!

Also take a look at my other fidget gear rings.

I had this on my to-do list for a while and also had a prototype, but it wasn't running that smoothly, but I tweaked the tooth shape a bit and it was much better. Then I thought It should be accompanied by a congenial knurling and opted for a bishamon kikko (traditional japanese) inspired pattern. I called it v3 merely for the 3 toothed design… 

This ring also comes with slots for the turn tool, in case you have problems breaking it free, or if you want to use a power tool to break it in.

The 3mf files also are split into 5 parts for multi-color printing:

1. the sun gear (inner ring)
2. the main parts of the planet gears
3. the lower 0.38mm (two layers) of the planet gears
4. the upper 0.38mm (two layers) of the planet gears
5. the outer ring gear

You can choose colors depending on your hardware: If you have a printer with multiple heads or nozzles, you can color the whole planets (2,3,4) in a different color for example, but if you have a single nozzle color changer you can save a lot of filament swaps by only coloring the top and bottom layers of the planets differently (4 color swaps - you can even do that manually, see description here).

General settings:

• I use 0.4mm nozzle and 0.17mm layer height
• random seam placement
• a bit of elephant foot compensation (say 0.2mm)
• I prefer NOT only one perimeter/wall on top layer
• 3 walls
• I also usually paint seams on the inside into one of the turn tool slots.
• Good bed adhesion is essential due to the small footprint.

This model requires a well dialed-in printer and filament combination; depending on these and the settings, the gears may

• rotate freely and quite smoothly right from the plate,
• need some force to break free,
• need some minutes of breaking in to run smoothly,
• be totally fused together.

If you have problems with fused gears:

• use force; if it breaks it wasn't usable anyway.
• try a different filament; some (like silk) are more prone to ooze and fuse than others.
• try reducing the extrusion multiplier/flow ratio a bit
• try a slightly negative XY size compensation (e.g. -0.02)
  (OrcaSlicer: negative for contour, positive for holes)
• try printing outer walls first
• try reducing acceleration and speed
• try reducing the temperature

Have fun!